Trueshot Aura

It has come to my attention that macros can be a bit intimidating for some of the hunters I know and love, so I figure the time has come to introduce macros I know and love to the public domain. I've typed these macros out so you only have to paste them into a lovely new macro, and they're good to go! If you don't know how to set up macros, the guide here will get you up to speed. All you have to do is follow their instructions, sub in my macro text for the sample text it provides (/assist Nebu), and you're all set!

While writing this post, I realized that I use more macros than I thought I did--they're just so darn USEFUL! Because there's a lot to think about here, I'm going to break it down into focus-dependent and non-focus-dependent macros. We'll start off with the larger focus-dependent set.

• First and foremost, the keystone of all focus-dependent macros, the set focus macro. It's probably the most complicated of all, ready? Here it is:
  
  /focus target
  
  I know, you're thinking this is crap, and wasting a valuable slot on your quickbar. Not so fast! This little gem will save you heaps of time in an instance, and even more time in a raid. Target your tank and slam this macro right at the beginning of your instance/raid/etc., and it'll save you clicks and key hits for the whole instance. Once you have a focus, you can do all kinds of nifty macro tricks! Not sure how this is actually going to help? Read on, my hunter friends.
  
  
• The next macro that should be on your quickbar is a quick and dirty assist-target macro. This saves you clicking on your tank and hitting F to pick up their target.
  
  /assist focus
  
  Mine has a bonus line at the end: "/cast Hunter's Mark". With one hotkey, I can target the tank's target and cast Hunter's mark. All that's left is sending in the pet and starting the trusty shot rotation.
  
  
• The queen of the focus-dependent macros is the Misdirection macro.
  
  /target focus
  /cast misdirection
  /targetlasttarget
  
  This saves SO much time, and can mean the difference between life or death for your party's squishies. Think of the Attumen/Midnight fight, when Attumen suddenly appears and starts attacking your party (he always goes for the squishies). You want to get that aggro where it belongs (i.e. tank or offtank), FAST. You don't want to be "click, cast, click"ing in the middle of the battle. You want to hit a key and open fire! This macro is a 70 Hunter's best friend. Use it. Love it. Kill bosses in the face with it.

So enough with focuses, let's get to some fun toys that don't require a focus.

• This brings me to my most commonly-used macro of all: the Hunter's Mark/Petattack combo.
  
  /cast Hunter's Mark
  /petattack
  
  One button, two glorious functions. With the touch of a single key, you've cast HM and sent your pet charging in to kick your target's teeth in. Ahh, pwnage.
  
  
• And now on to my second-favourite, the Aspect rotation.
  
  /castsequence Aspect of the Hawk, Aspect of the Viper
  
  I almost always run in either Aspect of the Hawk or Aspect of the viper, and I got tired of having two hotkeys taken up by the two. So, being the lazy bastard I am, I set up a macro to rotate between the two. Hit the hotkey, and I cast AotH, hit it again, I switch from Hawk to Viper, one more click switches from Viper to hawk. Very useful. This concept can also be applied to your shot rotation, too. Mine would look like this:
  
  /castsequence Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
  
  
• Lastly, I've always found it really annoying to pull for a trap with arcane or distracting shot, since your autoshot gets triggered by this, and you're stuck hitting escape in order to NOT break your own CC. I don't like having to do that, so (you guessed it) it's macro time!
  
  /cast Arcane shot(Rank 1) OR /cast Distracting Shot(Rank 1)
  /stopcasting
  
  I even have a separate one for use on those pestiferous caster-types (if you're Marksman-spec'd):
  
  /cast Silencing Shot
  /stopcasting
  
  
• Last and possibly least, I used to be in a guild with a healer who freaked whenever I feigned death, thinking that I had actually died on their watch. Soooo...I made a feign death macro that would announce in party chat that I was only faking it.
  
  /cast Feign Death
  /p I'm not quite dead!
  
  I don't use this one anymore, since you no longer appear actually dead to your party members, so the healers I party with now just take the dramatic death scene in stride. (N.B. - If you spam feign death, it'll spam your party chat with messages that you're not actually dead. Also, should you feign death and then actually die, people may feel the need to correct you in party chat.)